Without a doubt, most of us realize that a healthy, balanced diet has a lot to do with our general health. However, maintaining a healthy diet is the challenge that most of us are faced with daily, and what makes this a lot more difficult to attain is the fact that so much of what we eat is not good for us, even though it is labeled as the “good stuff.” Nobody seems to care about the ultimate nutritional value of our food.

The problem for us, however, is lack of transparency, and the ability to learn about how our food arrives at our table. If more people would take the time to learn about their food, investigate and read more, then Americans would be a much healthier nation for sure. It doesn’t help that most food establishments, especially fast-food chains seem to monopolize every street corner, so when you are desperate for a quick bite, your choices are limited to bad food. This sort of reality is going to be very difficult to change overnight; however, your ability to choose better products for your home, shop wisely, and eat healthy is completely in your hands.

Cattle that graze on pastures and feed in their natural habitat offer a product that is incomparable to beef that is produced on feedlots, where a diet of grains, antibiotics, hormones and many more additives enhance the slaughtering process by a good few years. The process of enhanced growth results in meat that lacks the nutritional value of pasture-raised cattle and the health benefits of consuming such meat decline dramatically. You can be sure that all of those additives in the meat have plenty of health risks to humans, and there has been plenty of research that proves the connection between some of those additives and diseases that humans have contracted as a result of consuming such products.

Contrary to popular belief, a piece of steak will not automatically harm your health, because it all depends on how that beef was produced in the first place. A grass-fed cut of beef is rich with vitamins and minerals and results in a healthy, creamy color to meat fat. A plethora of new research has proven that grass-fed beef is superior because of the way in which cattle is raised and fed. The humane way in which cattle are treated on grass-fed farms ads to the overall appeal, it is also an eco-friendly way to farm, because their diets are natural as opposed to grain-fed cattle that feed on genetically-modified soy and corn. These unnatural practices are absolutely not the way cows were designed to eat.

Cattle raised on commercial farms are sometimes fed on candy, wrappers and all, just to save money and hasten the fattening process. This type of poor diet has resulted in acidosis, inflammation and sickness, and in order to cure the animals they are given antibiotics. Inevitably, once we consume this meat the antibiotics are also transmitted to us. This in turn may cause hormonal, reproductive and developmental issues.

It is very difficult to ignore the stark differences between beef which comes from commercial farms and that which results from pasture-raised animals. When you purchase from Tevya’s you know you are getting the healthies products on the market for very competitive prices!

In the world of fast food, Chipotle’s unique approach to sourcing ingredients has earned us a lot of attention. Our vision is to change the way people think about and eat fast food, so nothing is more important to us than serving our customers fresh, delicious ingredients that are raised responsibly and prepared using classic cooking techniques.

When deciding which ingredients to source, our internal discussions consider many factors including taste, animal welfare, farming practices, supply quantity, price and location among others. We are always trying to find what we consider to be the best ingredients by balancing these various factors. For some ingredients, finding the best source is easy. In other cases, like beef, finding the best source can be quite complex — the right answer isn’t always obvious. When it comes to beef, for one thing, there are many different ways to raise cattle — from conventional (with antibiotics and hormones) to the higher standards we require for our Responsibly Raised brand beef (without antibiotics and hormones), and from grain-finished to entirely grass-fed cattle.

Over the years, we have had great success serving the premium beef we call Responsibly Raised, which is produced according to high standards requiring, among other things, that animals be raised without hormones or antibiotics. But lately, we have been wrestling with a particularly vexing issue regarding this beef. Over the last five years, as our restaurant count has grown from about 800 restaurants to more than 1,600, so have our demand for all of the ingredients we use. This has been a very good thing for the farmers and ranchers who raise those ingredients. As our restaurant count has grown, these farmers have had the opportunity to grow with us. In addition, we have helped numerous meat and dairy farmers convert from conventional production methods to the more responsible models we prefer.

Nevertheless, sometimes the existing supply of the premium meats we serve is unable to meet our growing demand. On occasions when we are unable to secure sufficient quantities of a particular Responsibly Raised meat, we temporarily replace it with a conventionally raised alternative — always informing our customers about this substitution with signage in our restaurants. This has been the case recently with a portion of the steak we serve, as the size of the total U.S. cattle herd has shrunk to its lowest point in more than 60 years.

Rather than serve conventionally raised steak, we recently began sourcing some steak from ranches in Southern Australia, which is among the very best places in the world for raising beef cattle entirely on grass. The meat produced by these ranchers is “grass-fed” in the truest sense of the term: The cattle spend their entire lives grazing on pastures or rangelands, eating only grass or forages (by definition, forages are hay and grass—corn is not forage). It meets or exceeds the husbandry standards set forth by the American Grassfed Association, not to mention all of the protocols we apply to our domestic Responsibly Raised beef. The cattle are raised without added hormones, antibiotics or growth promotants by ranchers committed to humane animal husbandry. Like the domestic beef we serve, our Australian grass-fed steak is aged and never frozen.

In 2013, our company purchased about 45 million pounds of domestic Responsibly Raised beef; but the U.S. supply isn’t growing quickly enough to match our demand. Even though our loyalty to American ranchers is strong, rather than meet the shortfall with conventionally raised beef from cattle treated with growth hormones and antibiotics, we decided to take this opportunity to start sourcing more truly grass-fed steak. So in addition to expanding our supply of beef raised without growth hormones or antibiotics, we are particularly excited to be able to serve more beef that comes from cattle raised entirely on grass.

We believe that in addition to the simple fact that our Australian grass-fed beef is delicious, serving it is an important step in our never-ending journey to help build a food system based on what we call Food With Integrity. Returning to grass-based farming systems for cattle is a core component of our long-term vision. Most livestock today spend much of their lives in conditions far from the natural ecosystems in which they evolved. Rather than doing what cattle do best, which is using the unique biology of the rumen to convert grass to protein, most cattle spend the latter part of their lives in feedlots, where they are fed grain like corn and soy. (There’s also evidence suggesting that grass-fed beef is healthier for the people who eat it, and when managed properly, easier on the environment.)

In the short-run, the grass-fed beef purchased from Australia will continue to supplement the premium Responsibly Raised beef we have long purchased from across the U.S. But over time, we hope that our demand for grass-fed beef will help pave the way for more American ranchers to adopt a grass-fed program, and in doing so turn grass-fed beef from a niche to a mainstream product.

There’s no question that parts of the U.S. are ideal for raising beef cattle exclusively on grass. Many American ranchers are doing this on a small scale today, and in the coming years we hope that American grass-fed beef becomes the standard in our restaurants. While we’re purchasing small amounts of grass-fed beef from American producers like Missouri’s Rain Crow Ranch, most of the U.S. grass-fed beef that meets our standards is simply not produced in sufficient quantities to meet our demand. That’s why we want to encourage more American ranchers to make the transition to raising cattle entirely on grass.

The transition toward grass-fed beef won’t happen overnight. But we need to start somewhere, and years of research by our purchasing team suggests that Australia is the best place to start sourcing grass-fed beef at the scale. We’re optimistic that our decision to serve grass-fed beef from Australia is one small step in the larger journey of restoring the practice of raising great American beef entirely on grass.

Grass-fed Angus cattle roam the pasture at Wholesome Living Farm in Winchester, Ky. It’s an appealing scene, but is grass-fed beef the best choice for the consumer, the animal and the planet? (Luke Sharett/Bloomberg)

Grass-fed beef is the meat of the moment. The image of cattle dotting green hillsides is an appealing counterpoint to the thought of herds corralled in crowded, grass-free feedlots. Advocates claim a trifecta of advantages: Grass-fed beef is better for you, for the animal and for the planet.

Is it?

First, let’s establish what we’re talking about. All U.S. beef cattle are started on grass, so “grass-fed” actually means “grass-finished,” or fed grass their whole lives. The USDA specifies that, to qualify as “grass-fed,” the animal has to eat “grass and forage” exclusively (after weaning) and must have “continuous access to pasture during the growing season.” It does not specify how much feed has to be from that pasture; hay and other harvested forage is allowed. (There are also third-party certification programs with varying criteria.)

Now, on to the questions.

Is grass-fed beef better for you?

It usually has higher concentrations of some nutrients: antioxidants, some vitamins, a kind of fat called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) and the long-chain omega-3 fats mostly found in fish. It also has less fat overall.

Most health claims focus on the omega-3 fats, which are generally regarded as healthful. The other nutrients are less relevant, says Alice H. Lichtenstein, a professor at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy: Either their amounts are too small to be significant or evidence of their value is equivocal. (Read the research on CLA, for example, and you find that a lot of “further research is warranted” and “findings are inconsistent.”)

As to the omega-3s, we need to look at amounts. Omega-3 levels in grass-fed beef generally are about 50 percent higher than in regular beef. But because the levels in regular beef are so low, that’s not much of an advantage. Concentrations can vary widely, but according to the USDA, a 100-gram serving (a little under four ounces) of grass-fed top sirloin contains 65 milligrams of omega-3 fats, loin has 40 and rib-eye has 37. So even that 65-milligram amount is only about 22 milligrams more than that for regular beef and still far below levels in low-fat fishes such as tilapia (134 milligrams) and haddock (136). The omega-3 powerhouse king salmon has 1,270 milligrams. (The same logic applies to milk from grass-fed cows. It’s higher in long-chain omega-3 fats than milk from grain-fed cows, but a cup still has only 18 milligrams.) Recommendations on how much of these fats we need vary; most are in the range of 300 to 1,000 milligrams per day.

“Grass-fed beef is fine” says Lichtenstein, “but it’s not a good source of omega-3 fats.” Although it certainly has a better fat profile than standard beef, she says she’s concerned that a reputation for healthfulness will make people believe that it’s better for them than it is, which will lead to overconsumption.

The bottom line is that grass-fed beef is better for you, by all means, eat it.

Is grass-fed beef better for the animal?

The answer is a resounding “YES.”

I’m drawn to the idea of cattle grazing freely in fields. I’ve seen the pictures of the green hillsides, and I’ve seen the pictures of the muddy feedlots. I asked Temple Grandin, one of our foremost experts on animal welfare, whose work informs livestock systems across the country, whether grazing cattle are happier than feedlot cattle.

The first thing she said was, “grain is like cake and ice cream to cows,” and I can’t help thinking that eating something they find delicious contributes to the animals’ happiness. It certainly does to mine. But, just as it’s unadvisable for us to make cake and ice cream our sole ration, cattle shouldn’t be eating only grain.

“Grain is fine as long as there’s plenty of roughage,” says Grandin. Otherwise, the pH in the animal’s system can become too acidic, and that leads to all kinds of health problems. The idea that feeding grain to a ruminant, whose digestive system is fine-tuned for grass, leads to suffering is both right and wrong.

“The problem comes when you push too hard,” says Grandin. Animals grow faster on grain, she points out, so there’s a financial incentive for the rancher to up the grain ration. Like anything connected with the care of animals, feeding cattle grain can be done well or poorly.

Grandin talked about other issues as well. If the feedlot is dry, roomy and shaded, cattle are perfectly content. If it’s muddy, crowded or hot, they’re not. One of the keys to cattle happiness, it turns out, is drainage. “The feed yard should have a 2 to 3 percent slope to keep it dry,” says Grandin. Pastures can pose problems, too. “Cattle also really like to graze,” she says, “but that hillside when you have a blizzard is not so nice.”

The key to cattle’s well-being isn’t in the venue. It’s in the management. What’s maddening is that, when you’re standing in front of your market’s meat case, you usually can’t know which feedlot, or which pasture, the beef came from, let alone how it’s managed.

Is grass-fed beef better for the planet?

Here’s where things get really complicated. In general, beef is not planet-friendly. Cattle produce methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and beef routinely tops the charts of foods you should eat less of to curb climate change.

Grass-fed advocates maintain that well-managed grazing can offset or even completely compensate for methane and other greenhouse gases associated with beef cattle by locking carbon in the soil. The vegetation soaks up and stores, or sequesters, carbon, preventing carbon dioxide — another greenhouse gas — from being released into the atmosphere.

The operative phrase is “well-managed.” When poorly managed, grazing can degrade pasture, and scientists and ranchers are experimenting with various densities and grazing patterns to try to figure out which ones lead to more effective carbon sequestration.

According to Jason Rowntree, an assistant professor at Michigan State University who specializes in grass-eating cattle, some researchers have managed to sequester three metric tons of carbon per hectare, about 2.5 acres, per year. (Sequestering a ton of carbon is the equivalent of locking away 3.7 tons of carbon dioxide.)

But Rattan Lal, director of the Carbon Management and Sequestration Center at Ohio State University, sets expectations lower. He says one metric ton per hectare is a reasonable estimate of the maximum that grazing can sequester in a place like Ohio, where growing conditions generally are favorable, and a half-ton would be more realistic in drier areas. He supports grass-fed beef but says carbon sequestration “can’t completely compensate for the greenhouse gases in beef production.”

Weighing carbon sequestration against methane production is a dicey business, and I’ve read many different estimates. To get a back-of-the-envelope sense of how the two compare, I did the math. The methane produced yearly by a beef steer is approximately equivalent to the carbon sequestered in an acre and a half (at Lal’s one-ton-per-hectare rate). The steer’s methane isn’t the only issue, of course: The climate cost of each steer has to include a whole year’s worth of its mom’s methane, since cows have only one calf annually. Then there are all the other inputs, including what goes into growing and harvesting the hay the steer eats when pasture is unavailable. As always, it’s complicated.

I found little agreement on how much carbon well-managed grazing can sequester, but across-the-board agreement that it can certainly sequester some. But, diabolically, so can well-managed grain farming: Systems that use crop rotation, cover crops, composting and no-till also sequester carbon. If we’re comparing grass-fed with grain-fed, it’s only fair to assume excellent management in both systems.

There are a few other confounding issues. Cattle fed grain emit less methane and grow faster, which means they’re not alive — emitting methane — as long. Confining cattle in feedlots allows manure to be collected and fed to a digester, which converts it to energy — or, of course, it can leak out of badly managed facilities to pollute our water. In winter, bringing in harvested hay requires more energy than bringing in grain, because you need more of it. But grass-fed cattle turn a plant that humans can’t eat into high-quality people food, which is important in places where marginal land will grow grass but not crops. It’s a very mixed bag.

Grass-fed cattle are better for the planet than grain-fed.

The upshot

Where does that leave us?

Well, it’s left me a little less doctrinaire. Almost always, when I talk to scientists and farmers about food supply issues — whether it’s farm size, organic methods, animal welfare, GMOs, climate impact — the answer is complicated. When it comes to feeding people, there is never one right answer. It depends on the farm, the area, the animal, the crop, the weather, the market and a bazillion other things. Both Rowntree, who has spent years figuring out how best to graze cattle, and Lal, who has devoted a career to climate-change mitigation, are quick to tell me that grass-fed isn’t the only way.

What the grass-fed vs. grain-fed debate really tells us is how inadequate labels are to differentiate good from bad in our food supply. Yet those labels are regularly embroidered on flags and hoisted over intractable positions. Grass-fed beef is better! Buy organic!

Consumers have been led to believe that meat is meat is meat. In other words, no matter what an animal is fed, the nutritional value of its products remains the same. This is not true. An animal’s diet can have a profound influence on the nutrient content of its products.

The difference between grainfed and grassfed animal products is dramatic.

First of all, grassfed products tend to be much lower in total fat than grainfed products. For example, a sirloin steak from a grassfed steer has about one half to one third the amount of fat as a similar cut from a grainfed steer.

In fact, grassfed meat has about the same amount of fat as skinless chicken or wild deer or elk.1 When meat is this lean, it actually lowers your LDL cholesterol levels.2

Because grassfed meat is so lean, it is also lower in calories.

Fat has 9 calories per gram, compared with only 4 calories for protein and carbohydrates. The greater the fat content, the greater the number of calories.

A 6-ounce steak from a grass-finished steer has almost 100 fewer calories than a 6-ounce steak from a grainfed steer.

If you eat a typical amount of beef (66.5 pounds a year), switching to grassfed beef will save you 17,733 calories a year—without requiring any willpower or change in eating habits. If everything else in your diet remains constant, you’ll lose about six pounds a year. If all Americans switched to grassfed meat, our national epidemic of obesity would begin to diminish.

Extra Omega-3s

Although grassfed meat is low in “bad” fat (including saturated fat), it gives you from two to six times more of a type of “good” fat called “omega-3 fatty acids.”

Omega-3 fatty acids play a vital role in every cell and system in your body. For example, of all the fats, they are the most “heart friendly.” People who have ample amounts of omega-3s in their diet are less likely to have high blood pressure or an irregular heartbeat. Remarkably, they are 50 percent less likely to have a serious heart attack.3

Omega-3s are essential for your brain as well. People with a diet rich in omega-3s are less likely to be afflicted with depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit disorder (hyperactivity), or Alzheimer’s disease.4

Another benefit of omega-3s is that they may reduce your risk of cancer.

In animal studies, these essential fatty acids have slowed the growth of a wide array of cancers and kept them from spreading.5 Although the human research is in its infancy, researchers have shown that omega-3s can slow or even reverse the extreme weight loss that accompanies advanced cancer.6 They can also hasten recovery from cancer surgery.7

Furthermore, animal studies suggest that people with cancer who have high levels of omega-3s in their tissues may respond better to chemotherapy than people with low levels.8 Omega-3s are most abundant in seafood and certain nuts and seeds such as flaxseeds and walnuts, but they are also found in grassfed animal products.

The reason that grassfed animals have more omega-3s than grainfed animals is that omega-3s are formed in the green leaves (specifically the chloroplasts) of plants. Sixty percent of the fat content of grass is a type of omega-3 fatty acid called alpha-linolenic or LNA.

When cattle are taken off grass and shipped to a feedlot to be fattened on grain, they lose their valuable store of LNA as well as two other types of omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA. Each day that an animal spends in the feedlot, its supply of omega-3s is diminished.9

The graph below illustrates this rapid decline.

When chickens are housed indoors and deprived of greens, their meat and eggs also become artificially low in omega-3s.10

Eggs from pastured hens can contain as much as 20 times more omega-3s than eggs from factory hens.

Switching our livestock from their natural diet of grass to large amounts of grain is one of the reasons our modern diet is deficient in these essential fats. It has been estimated that only 40 percent of Americans consume a sufficient supply of these nutrients. Twenty percent have levels so low that they cannot be detected.11 Switching to grassfed animal products is one way to restore this vital nutrient to your diet.

The CLA Bonus The meat and milk from grassfed ruminants are the richest known source of another type of good fat called “conjugated linoleic acid” or CLA. When ruminants are raised on fresh pasture alone, their milk and meat contain as much as five times more CLA than products from animals fed conventional diets.12

CLA may be one of our most potent defenses against cancer.

In laboratory animals, a very small percentage of CLA — a mere 0.1 percent of total calories —greatly reduced tumor growth.13 Researcher Tilak Dhiman from Utah State University estimates that you may be able to lower your risk of cancer simply by eating the following grassfed products each day: one glass of whole milk, one ounce of cheese, and one serving of meat. You would have to eat five times that amount of grainfed meat and dairy products to get the same level of protection.

There is new evidence suggesting that CLA does reduce cancer risk in humans.

In a Finnish study, women who had the highest levels of CLA in their diet, had a 60 percent lower risk of breast cancer than those with the lowest levels of CLA.

Switching from grainfed to grassfed meat and dairy products places women in this lowest risk category.14 Vitamin E In addition to being higher in omega-3s and CLA, meat from grassfed animals is higher in vitamin E.

The graph below shows vitamin E levels in meat from: 1) feedlot cattle, 2) feedlot cattle given high doses of synthetic vitamin E (1,000 IU per day), and 3) cattle raised on fresh pasture with no added supplements. The meat from the pastured cattle is four times higher in vitamin E than the meat from the feedlot cattle and, interestingly, almost twice as high as the meat from the feedlot cattle given vitamin E supplements.15

In humans, vitamin E is linked with a lower risk of heart disease and cancer. This potent antioxidant may also have anti-aging properties. Most Americans are deficient in vitamin E.

The NY Times best selling author, Jo Robinson, has an informative book “Why Grassfed is Best!” on the benefits of grassfed beef. She has done a great service educating America about this healthy beef and her book is a “must have” in your library of health books. Please visit her web site at www.eatwild.com to purchase the book and learn more about this healthy beef.

12. Dhiman, T. R., G. R. Anand, et al. (1999). “Conjugated linoleic acid content of milk from cows fed different diets.” J Dairy Sci 82(10): 2146-56. Interestingly, when the pasture was machine-harvested and then fed to the animals as hay, the cows produced far less CLA than when they were grazing on that pasture, even though the hay was made from the very same grass. The fat that the animals use to produce CLA is oxidized during the wilting, drying process. For maximum CLA, animals need to be grazing living pasture.

15. Smith, G.C. “Dietary supplementation of vitamin E to cattle to improve shelf life and case life of beef for domestic and international markets.” Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1171

Back to Pasture. Since the late 1990s, a growing number of ranchers have stopped sending their animals to the feedlots to be fattened on grain, soy and other supplements. Instead, they are keeping their animals home on the range where they forage on pasture, their native diet. These new-age ranchers do not treat their livestock with hormones or feed them growth-promoting additives. As a result, the animals grow at a natural pace. For these reasons and more, grass-fed animals live low-stress lives and are so healthy there is no reason to treat them with antibiotics or other drugs.

More Nutritious. A major benefit of raising animals on pasture is that their products are healthier for you. For example, compared with feedlot meat, meat from grass-fed beef, bison, lamb and goats has less total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and calories. It also has more vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C, and a number of health-promoting fats, including omega-3 fatty acids and “conjugated linoleic acid,” or CLA. Read more about the nutritional benefits of raising animals on pasture.

The Art and Science of Grassfarming. Raising animals on pasture requires more knowledge and skill than sending them to a feedlot. For example, in order for grass-fed beef to be succulent and tender, the cattle need to forage on high-quality grasses and legumes, especially in the months prior to slaughter. Providing this nutritious and natural diet requires healthy soil and careful pasture management so that the plants are maintained at an optimal stage of growth. Because high-quality pasture is the key to high-quality animal products, many pasture-based ranchers refer to themselves as "grassfarmers" rather than “ranchers.” They raise great grass; the animals do all the rest.

Factory Farming. Raising animals on pasture is dramatically different from the status quo. Virtually all the meat, eggs, and dairy products that you find in the supermarket come from animals raised in confinement in large facilities called CAFOs or “Confined Animal Feeding Operations.” These highly mechanized operations provide a year-round supply of food at a reasonable price. Although the food is cheap and convenient, there is growing recognition that factory farming creates a host of problems, including:• Animal stress and abuse• Air, land, and water pollution• The unnecessary use of hormones, antibiotics, and other drugs• Low-paid, stressful farm work• The loss of small family farms• Food with less nutritional value.

Unnatural Diets. Animals raised in factory farms are given diets designed to boost their productivity and lower costs. The main ingredients are genetically modified grain and soy that are kept at artificially low prices by government subsidies. To further cut costs, the feed may also contain “by-product feedstuff” such as municipal garbage, stale pastry, chicken feathers, and candy. Until 1997, U.S. cattle were also being fed meat that had been trimmed from other cattle, in effect turning herbivores into carnivores. This unnatural practice is believed to be the underlying cause of BSE or “mad cow disease.”

Animal Stress. A high-grain diet can cause physical problems for ruminants—cud-chewing animals such as cattle, dairy cows, goats, bison, and sheep. Ruminants are designed to eat fibrous grasses, plants, and shrubs—not starchy, low-fiber grain. When they are switched from pasture to grain, they can become afflicted with a number of disorders, including a common but painful condition called “subacute acidosis.” Cattle with subacute acidosis kick at their bellies, go off their feed, and eat dirt. To prevent more serious and sometimes fatal reactions, the animals are given chemical additives along with a constant, low-level dose of antibiotics. Some of these antibiotics are the same ones used in human medicine. When medications are overused in the feedlots, bacteria become resistant to them. When people become infected with these new, disease-resistant bacteria, there are fewer medications available to treat them.

Caged Pigs, Chickens, Ducks and Geese. Most of the nation’s chickens, turkeys, and pigs are also being raised in confinement. Typically, they suffer an even worse fate than the grazing animals. Tightly packed into cages, sheds, or pens, they cannot practice their normal behaviors, such as rooting, grazing, and roosting. Laying hens are crowded into cages that are so small that there is not enough room for all of the birds to sit down at one time. An added insult is that they cannot escape the stench of their own manure. Meat and eggs from these animals are lower in a number of key vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids.

Environmental Degradation. When animals are raised in feedlots or cages, they deposit large amounts of manure in a small amount of space. The manure must be collected and transported away from the area, an expensive proposition. To cut costs, it is dumped as close to the feedlot as possible. As a result, the surrounding soil is overloaded with nutrients, which can cause ground and water pollution. When animals are raised outdoors on pasture, their manure is spread over a wide area of land, making it a welcome source of organic fertilizer, not a “waste management problem.” Read more about the environmental differences between factory farming and grass-based production.

The Healthiest Choice. When you choose to eat meat, eggs, and dairy products from animals raised on pasture, you are improving the welfare of the animals, helping to put an end to environmental degradation, helping small-scale ranchers and farmers make a living from the land, helping to sustain rural communities, and giving your family the healthiest possible food. It’s a win-win-win-win situation.

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